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Technorati“We are doing this all over China,” said an underground Chinese pastor to Pearce. “This is the hunger for God we are sensing today,” he observed.
The Chinese government has recently for the first time acknowledged that there are some 130 million Christians, including unregistered Christians, in China.
According to Chinese church leaders, a pastor in China leads about 100 people a month to Christ in the countryside.
The neighboring country of Vietnam is also witnessing an explosive Christian revival. In 1975, Vietnam has about 50,000 baptized believers and today there are about 1.5 million Christians.
Pearce spoke of a church planter referred to as “Happy” who accepted Christ eight years ago and has planted 30 churches during that time.
Happy, who is always smiling and in the front row of the church clapping to the choir, told Pearce a few weeks ago during his trip to Vietnam that in one village where he was working the police had used his family as an example to discourage people from accepting Christianity.
The police had stripped Happy’s wife, who was four months pregnant, and whipped her to the point she lost the baby. The police then turned on him and using logs beat him on the face and crushed the bones on the side of his face and literally dislodged his eye.
Afterwards, his wife and him crawled behind a hut prayed and push his eye back in. Although Happy says his eye is fine and never complains, his right eye always looks outward.
Furthermore, the police has burnt his house seven times and has beaten his two young daughters.
Rather than retreating, Happy and his wife and two daughters continued to plant churches living on one bamboo mat in the ashes of his home.
He has since refused to build a home because he said the police will burn it down again and lives in a structure made out of tubes where 15 other persecuted families have joined as well as three orphans the family has adopted.
“This fellow does not stop,” said Pearce. “It doesn’t matter what they throw at him, what Satan throws at him; he will not stop. He will win as many people to Christ in Vietnam before the end comes as he can.”
“This is passion. This is what Jesus saw when he came over the hill – he saw needy people,” said the mission leader. “This is what Happy sees; he sees people who are desperate in Vietnam - they are lost either lost in Communism, Buddhism, animism, or some other form. They don’t know the truth about Christ and he is committed to taking that truth to them.
Pearce also informed about the revival in Colombia where during this past New Years in the western city of Cali, a 24 hour prayer event was held in a football stadium. At midnight during the altar call, 2,000 people accepted Christ in this country renowned for its drug lords and corrupt lifestyle.
“I tell people this: I want to go to heaven tired,” said Pearce.
“That is my goal. I have one goal in life – to go to heaven tired simply because we work as hard and feverously as we can right now to take the Gospel to every single individual that we can because the clock is ticking; there is a time limit,” he added, referring to Revelations 7:9 on the multitude of nations during the last day.
Empower Ministries is an international mission organization that provides assistance to national churches in 27 countries through supplies of Bibles, New Testament and training materials; national worker support; and tools such as bicycles, lanterns or boats for evangelism. The mission group works with many underground churches in Asia.
On the web: empowerministries.ca
